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PLANNED PARENTHOOD AND THE LIBERATION OF A MODERN DACHAU

Godwin’s law states that in an argument, the first party to bring up Nazis as hyperbole loses the debate. At the risk of losing before starting, I’m willing to go there and let the reader decide if the analogies I draw hold any merit.

Let me begin by stating I am not a social issues conservative. What I mean by that is that my conservatism has been primarily driven by economic, fiscal, and monetary issues, the desire for a much smaller government, and unwavering support for the protections afforded us in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

If homosexuals want to get married and be miserable like the rest of us, good on them. If people want to identify as a different race, or gender, or species, or a stalk of celery, I don’t care, so long as I am not forced to pay anything to validate it nor punished for saying that I think those people are silly. After all, as Jefferson said, “rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” I have often said that we can bicker about social issues, but if we’re doing it in a bread line because the economy fell apart, it is of little consequence. Prioritize, I told my socially conservative friends.

Then I watched the planned parenthood videos. I was immediately reminded of my trip to Germany and the concentration camp at Dachau a few years ago. As my wife and I explored downtown Munich, I remember spontaneously weeping at the sound of a street musician playing his violin in the Marienplatz, Mozart echoing through the stone archways and porticos. I was overcome with emotion at the thought that such a culturally and technologically advanced society capable of producing such breathtaking beauty was equally capable of committing such vile acts of human depravity as the Holocaust.

I was then reminded of the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers that told of the liberation of a concentration camp in Bavaria by the 101st Airborne Division. The Germans in the nearby towns claimed to know nothing of the camp even though the stench of death hung in the air; they weren’t Nazis, they exclaimed. They had done nothing wrong, merely bystanders, innocent civilians. It wasn’t until the American troops dragged them by the scruffs of their necks to the camp and forced them to clean up what they claimed they were oblivious to, did they blubberingly acknowledge the abject horror of what they, by their inaction, acquiescence, or complicity, had allowed to happen. That “out of sight, out of mind” mentality had allowed them to ignore their conscience and separate themselves from their own humanity.

Never again? The mainstream media has kept virtually silent on the issue or pushed a different narrative in an act of collusion that would make Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels blush. The callousness with which these purveyors of “health services” described the procedures by which they were killing unborn babies over wine and cheese was reminiscent of the sterile language used in the medical reports on file at the Holocaust museum. Planned parenthood hired a PR firm to highlight the “good” they do. How nice, mammograms and STD tests. But that argument didn’t absolve Bayer (the German drugs firm) from their use of Jews as slave labor and their connections to the development of the gas used in gas chambers just so we could have faster-acting aspirin. The ends do not justify the means.

Now we have Democrats in the Senate blocking a bill to defund planned parenthood while admitting that they had not seen the videos and were relying on second-hand (false) claims that the videos were doctored. Roe v. Wade is the law of land here in America, we’re told. Well, Nazi Germany had hundreds of laws and regulations on the books at all levels of government persecuting Jews and other “undesirables.” History screams that just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.

I shook as I watched the videos and wept just as I did in that square in Munich because I realized I was just as guilty as those townsfolk who denied the reality of what was going on. Worse yet, I wept because I realized that we as Americans in 2015 have the same capacity for turning a blind eye to the systematic extermination of life…and that we’ve been doing it for much longer.

Perhaps those folks in Congress on record supporting this organization with your tax dollars should be grabbed by the scruff of their necks and forced to watch the video in front of everyone on the floor of the House and Senate, then vote.

That said, I am a realist. I understand that abortions are going to happen regardless of what laws are on the books. The difference here is who is complicit in them. A patient and doctor acting alone must, in the end, answer to their respective gods for their actions. But tax revenue forcibly taken by the government to pay for this makes unwilling accomplices of us all. The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. The only question now is what will you do?

Disclaimer

The views expressed herein are solely those of The Reasonable Republican and should not be attributed to any agency, department, or office in which he may have previously been (or may currently be) employed.